Chapter 1075
Leaving the matter of diagnosing sensing formations to try to account for special techniques to Catarina, Velvet was ready to move on. Ratna, in the guise of Ambassador Vlasta, was still a threat to the Scarlet Alliance in some sense, but not in the same way she had been worried about. She was a thousand times more relaxed upon coming to that ultimate conclusion of her investigations.
Just in time for her to move on. Ratna might take note of her absence, or she might simply assume that Velvet was avoiding her after having confirmed her presence. Most likely, Velvet hadn’t been hidden from her half as often as she believed, and the occasional instances of ‘spotting her’ might have been to throw her off. She’d have to work on that… from a great distance.
Starting with a whole realm away, then going technically further back into the same realm. The twins would be returning with her, armed with stores of knowledge- specifically meant to be both useful to the Chaotic Conglomeration and not too damaging if it fell into the hands of the Exalted Quadrant. Along with them would be a number of others willing to take a long term assignment far from home. They would be the nominal enforcers of the Scarlet Alliance’s rules.
But of course, the actual enforcers would be much smaller.
The journey to the lower realms was undertaken almost entirely on ‘normal’ ships. It wouldn’t do to have strange and unique ships going through populated systems frequently, and they wanted to keep the technology secret for as long as possible. Fortunately, even in the worst case where it was captured the vessels weren’t really useful for either of the great powers. What were they going to do, send a couple hundred people to attack the lower realms alone?
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Rather than adapting to lower energy, Velvet intended to avoid any sort of changes. After all, she wasn’t planning to stay in the lower realms for long. Returning to the upper realms shortly thereafter would then involve adapting back, and she wasn’t certain that was entirely safe. Nobody else really needed to do it either, since they would be safe among allies.
Even so, the twins chose to try it- because they had never used exclusively lower energy before. They were born in the upper realms, so their only exposure to lower energy had been from materials obtained from the lower realms.
Their first stop was Akrys, where they were meant to pick up Crossed Antennae and her colonies. Or at least, a portion of them. Even though ants were quite compact, a single ship could not cover multiple planets worth of them.